Comments (0)

By James Kelly, July 27, 2010

Louise Walsh,  Music Network’s PR & Marketing Manager was faced with the not insubstantial task of marketing Love: Live Music, a brand new nationwide event, at a time when across the arts, marketing budgets are rapidly disappearing. How could such a new event connect with audiences across the country when time was of the essence, and budgets were very limited? Clearly, the online communication strategy could play a big part. In the run in to the inaugural event, Louise received mentoring in this area from Lucy Campbell and Murne Laffan in RTÉ Publishing.

As the timeframe of the mentoring coincided with the run-in to the festival, Louise’s report on the lessons she learnt in the mentoring process is a good indicator of what can be achieved by those looking to build an online campaign around an event for the first time (to download a PDF, click on this link: Music Network – RTE Publishing mentoring report).

***

Louise Walsh Report

Our Mentoring Requirement

RTE Publishing mentored us on the development of an online communications plan for Ireland’s first national music day, love:live music, that took place on Friday 16th April. We planned to use social networking and online platforms for the first time to generate viral marketing between the events participants and to a wider audience. As resources for the event were limited, online communications were central to the promotional strategy, working in tandem with in kind advertising and a PR Strategy.

With guidance from Lucy and Múirne, we started out by developing an online communications plan that aimed to generate general awareness of the event, to encourage people to find out what’s on in their area (thereby increasing the number of people attending the events) and to encourage people to get involved by registering their own event (thereby increasing the number of events taking place)

The elements of the online communications plan included:

Website Development

An event specific website (www.lovelivemusic.ie ) was developed by Pixel Design to which all offline and online activity directed people. Search engine optimisation functions were built into the event site so that it was easily found when searched for. The website included features such as RSS feeds, a blog, share buttons, google maps for events, enewsletter subscription, a featured event as well as links to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace.

Email Broadcasting

An email broadcasting account was set up in order to issue e newsletters to our contacts, again directing people to the event site.

Social Media Optimisation

The aim of using social media sites was to direct visitors to lovelivemusic.ie to either find out about an event in their area or to register an event of their own. Music Network set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. In order to generate friends/fans/followers to these platforms, Music Network invited all previous touring artists, all current artists on the Music Network roster, and all recipients of Music Network awards (and went from having no social media activity to having 194 followers on Twitter, 491 fans on Facebook and 344 friends on MySpace).

Finally, we targeted bloggers with event information via digital press releases.

***

image courtesy Music Network

***

What worked, what didn’t

RTE Publishing’s advice on our online communications, establishing and maintaining social networking and online platforms was of great value to the project, as we had no experience in this area. For me, the main benefit of the mentoring was being able to run the plans by people who have the expertise, and be assured by them that we were on the right track. Once we had set up accounts on the various platforms, they assured us that our numbers of fans/followers/friends were healthy.

The mentoring was also of great value in terms of troubleshooting, as and when problems emerged.  One issue that arose for me early on was how to effectively brand the event without loosing the association with Music Network. The mentors suggested using a solution based on how RTE uses the corporate brand over a number of activity areas. They also stressed the importance from the outset of getting all the participants using the branding too by sending them branding guidelines.

The mentors had lots of suggestions and ideas, (not all of which we used this time around) which were really helpful in mapping out how far we could take the online communications.  For us, all of their suggestions that we implemented worked, and the only downside was that we couldn’t implement them all this time around, or we underestimated the time that it would take realise those ideas.

For example, they stressed at an early stage to secure broadcasting and streaming rights from all participants so that we can use the content on online platforms, which we did. They also suggested engaging stringers to ensure that we could have content post events for the social media platforms. We managed to engage some stringers, but not enough, and missed the boat on getting the content, which is now lost to us. But, that was a huge learning for us.
We didn’t maximise the potential of You Tube to harness content from partner organisations. As mentioned above, next year we will engage much more stingers and use this content post event.

***

Overall conclusions

Overall, the event was a success, due in no small part to the online communications plan and the mentoring received. As resources for the event were limited, we could not have achieved the reach that we did, without it.

Many of the ideas that were suggested by the mentors but not activated were ones that we simply didn’t have the people power to put in place. A huge learning from this project has been that while social media is free to use, it needs to be resourced with people and time in order to make the best use of it. Facebook and Twitter are constantly hungry and need to be fed content!

The mentoring was at a strategic level, but closer to the event, I realised that we would have benefited from some of the very basic skills in using the social media platforms. However, at that point, the event was gaining momentum and there was not the time to seek this resource, even though it could have been made available to us.

Comments (0)

By James Kelly, January 28, 2010

Kevin Costner – he built it, and they actually did come

.

Whoever said ‘if we build it, they will come‘, wasn’t a web designer.

He was, in fact, the ghost of a baseball player, speaking to a farmer from Iowa. However, ghostly apparitions aside, as anyone who has built a website (started a facebook page/ Twitter account/ Ning community, etc etc) will know, putting something up online is only half the battle, it takes work to get the word out, and to get traffic in.

So while the arts in Ireland is seeing an increasing amount of high quality work occurring online, these endeavours aren’t always getting the attention they deserve. We’re looking to provide a platform to showcase new work in this area, and with any luck to help bring this work to a wider arts public, nationally and internationally.

So, if you’re using the internet to present work in a new way, if you’re launching a dynamic new website, if you’ve a new and imaginative ways of engaging with new audiences online, drop an email to james.kelly(at)artsaudiences.ie. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Comments (0)

By James Kelly, November 20, 2009

great to see the introduction of flash mobs as part of the strategy of the dynamic National Campaign For The Arts.

Here is footage of last  Saturday’s flashmob in Cork;

.

.

Wexford plays host to the next event of this kind – co-ordinated by masters of street performance,  Bui Bolg, the A for Arts Masked Flash Mob Event will take place in Wexford Town 12pm Saturday 21st Nov – expect something special!

All of this is of course done to highlight the importance of the arts to the everyday lives of all Ireland citizens – if you haven’t already signed the petition, please do, by clicking here

Comments (0)

By James Kelly, November 12, 2009

Photo copyright Eric Orns 2000

The Brooklyn Museum used online crowdsourcing to a exciting end, in the conception and delivery of their Click! photography exhibition, in a process which invited the museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process.

It began with an open call—artists were asked to electronically submit a work of photography that responds to the exhibition’s theme, “Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” along with an artist statement.

After the conclusion of the open call, an online forum opened for audience evaluation of all submissions (all works were posted as anonymous). As part of the evaluation, each visitor answered a series of questions about his/her knowledge of art and perceived expertise.

Click! culminated in an exhibition at the Museum, where the artworks were installed according to their relative ranking from the juried process.

The results are, of course, online, where the public can engage with discussions and analysis of the work, and the entire process.

Comments (0)

By James Kelly, August 25, 2009

.

Seeking to build new audiences for its work, the San Francisco Opera, well aware of the challenges in bringing new audiences into traditional performance spaces, brought the mountain to Moses. In June 2008, they  staged a free simulcast of Lucia di Lammermoor in the AT&T baseball park . The performance took place in the War Memorial Opera House, and using their website to draw audiences, the opera was relayed live to the stadium where 23,000 attended. This attendance has since been topped by this year’s simulcast of Tosca, which drew a crowd of 27,000.

Speaking of the first screening, the opera’s director of marketing Marcia Lazer told the Wallace Foundation;

“In our 2007-8 season, we analyzed our data base for the number of audience members 25-44 years old and found that 19 percent of our patrons were in that age range. One of our (…) goals over next few years is to increase that base by 15 percent.

“We scheduled a simulcast of Lucia di Lammermoor to AT&T Park in June 2008 and offered signups on the web, and that is probably the most important thing we did because it was the only way to get contact information. When we did a demographic overlay of the list, we found that 30 percent of our 9,000 signups were between 25 and 44. The best thing about the simulcasts is they invite in a much younger audience than we get in the opera house”.

Beyond the success of that single event, however, were the longer-term payoffs for the Opera in building a database of potential future ticket-buyers: 8,660 households signed up online for pre-event registration, 30 percent of whom were between 25 and 44, and more than 5,300 of the sign-ups were not previously on the Opera’s Tessitura database.

Those interested in attending next month’s free upcoming simulcast of Il Travatore can sign up here.  This link also offers the visitor the opportunity to hear extracts from the opera and to read a plot summary, as well as offering the opportunity to buy a picnic basket for the night out. Focaccia anyone?